Directions(1-10):Although John Wisdom’s writings in philosophy
show clearly the influence of Wittgenstein, they
nevertheless also display a (1) originality. Despite the
(2) and difficulty of his style, a careful reading of
Wisdom is seldom (3). He is a unique kind of genius
in philosophy.
This essay is an excellent example of Wisdom’s
repeated attempts to (4) the ultimate bases of
philosophical perplexity. A great deal of the time
Wisdom i s (5) interested in finding out why
metaphysicians f eel (6) to utter such strange
sentences (e.g. “Time is unreal”, There are no material things”, etc). According to Wisdom, such sentences
are both false (and perhaps meaningless) and yet (7).
Even more than Wittgenstein, Wisdom has stressed
the “therapeutic” conception of philosophy, a view that
comes out clearly in this essay where he emphasizes
the analogy between philosophical and neurotic
distress (8) them with other kinds of problems.
The reader who is interested in gaining a fuller (9)
with Wisdom’s thought is referred to his famous article
“Gods in Philosophy and Psycho-analysis”. Other Minds
is Wisdom’s most (10) discussion of a single topic
and in many ways his finest work